News for Monday, 4 June 2007

Apple has posted on its website 3 new iPhone ads, which should be massively displayed on US TV channels in the coming days.
While quickly unveiling main iPhone features, it also announced the availability of the product for June 29th.

So, as confirmed by Steve Jobs during D5 meeting, Apple will stay on schedule to release its iPhone in June (one day...).
To enjoy the iPhone ads: http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/

In the world of GPU manufacturers, the recent acquisition of ATI by AMD was a major earthquake, and left NVidia alone with no other choice than finding partnership with Intel or being swollen by Santa Clara’s Giant. There was a little difference, NVidia enjoys being independent, and its value (financial and technology) is higher than ATI.
Couple of months ago, Intel announced its goal to enter true expand its leadership position as GPU manufacturer beyond its share memory graphic chipsets models. Intel wants to join the battle for the most powerful graphic card, and via its project Larrabee, the founder is expecting to benefit from its leadership in parallelization and multicore technologies to deliver graphic components with amazing groundbreaking capabilities. Indeed, processing power required by 3D engines and video displays have a lot of common requirements, and could indeed be perform in parallel by the same unit.
To complete this project, Intel might need the help of NVidia expertise when it comes to software-based handling of GPUs. So if both companies might remain independent, we might see in the coming months an increased number of PR related to Intel-NVidia partnerships in technology development.
A close collaboration between both leaders might also be the only exit for current GPU architecture reaching the edge of current design, a bit like Intel and its P4 couple of years ago. Current GPUs are now the most power-consuming component in our computer, and the major heat-releasing unit to be cool down. NVidia could benefit from Intel experience in developing GPU with an improved performance/watt ratio, and opening new market for future low power consumption

Real Network announced the new version of its media player born in 1995. If it is not as popular as it used to be, Real Network added a new feature in the last version: download and save video locally.
In this new version, consumers can use a single-click process to quickly download and save videos without worrying about format compatibility issues as the new RealPlayer supports most videos format, including Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime, and Real. Consumers will also be able to download multiple video simultaneously and then burn them on CD (or DVD with RealPlayer Plus) to watch them in their standalone DVD player (the "old" Video CD format used by Real being supported by most brands).
To avoid any problems with copyrights infringements, RealPlayer will not be able to download DRM-protected videos, but for Real Network the target is clearly to give access via its media player to video libraries found on YouTube or DailyMotion.

Our friends from MacPlus have launched a website entitled Mac2sell.
It offers you a way to estimate the value of a second hand hardware model (to be sold or purchased), and based on a G3, G4, G5 or Intel CPU. Pay attention as it does not upgrade the estimate if you have added a faster HD or boosted the RAM.
Mac2sell